Friends

The Kasbah Taorirt stands to the right of the Mohammed V avenue, at the east (Skoura direction) end of town, it’s a dusty, twenty minute walk from the bus station. Although built by the Glaoui, the Kasbah was never an actual residence of its chiefs, However, located at this strategic junction of the southern trading routes, it was always controlled by a close relative, In the 1930s, when the Glaoui were the undisputed masters of the south, it was perhaps the largest of all Moroccan Kasbahs an enormous family domain housing numerous sons and cousins of the dynasty, along with several hundred of their servants and laborers, builders and craftsmen, even semi-itinerant Jewish tailors and moneylenders. Since then, and especially since being taken over by the government after independence, the Kasbah has fallen into drastic decline, In 1994, the government announced plans to ‘rehabiliate’ the Kasbah and also those at Ait Benhaddou but at time of writing of this article had not started and parts of the structure had disappeared, washed away by heavy rains; others are completely unsafe, and it is only a small section of the original, a kind of village within the Kasbah, that remains occupied today, that part is towards the rear of the rambling complex of rooms, courtyards and alleyways, what you are shown is just the main reception courtyard and a handful of principal rooms, lavishly decorated but not especially significant or representative of the old order of things, with an eye, perhaps, to tourism, they are known as the ”the harem”.